With its spa town heritage and surrounding countryside, Ilkley’s main industry is tourism. The town centre is characterised by Victorian architecture, wide streets and floral displays. Ilkley Moor (to the south of the town) is the location of a Yorkshire folk song, “On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at” (“On Ilkley Moor without a hat”)….

In the 17th and 18th centuries the town gained a reputation for the efficacy of its water. In the 19th century it became established as a fashionable spa town, with the construction a mile to the east of the town, at Wheatley, of the vast Ben Rhydding Hydro or Hydropathic Establishment between 1843 and 1844. Tourists flocked here to ‘take the waters’ and bathe in the cold water spring. Wheatley today is called Ben Rhydding after the Hydro (since demolished).

Development based on the Hydro movement, and upon the establishment of a number of convalescent homes and hospitals, was accelerated by the establishment of a railway connection from Leeds and Bradford in 1865. Charles Darwin underwent hydropathic treatment at Ilkley Wells House when his The Origin of Species was published in November 1859, staying with his family at the nearby North View House (now Hillside Court). Other Victorian visitors to the town include Madame Tussaud.

Today, the only remaining Hydro is the white cottage known as White Wells House, which can be seen and visited on the edge of the moor over looking the town…

… in the remains of dolmens and old Druidic altars lying around everywhere, [Ilkley] has traces of something that reminds one of the ancient spirituality that has, however, no successors. It is most moving to have on the one hand the impression [of the industrialism] I just described and then, on the other, to climb a hill in this region so filled with the effects of those impressions and then find in those very characteristic places the remains of ancient sacrificial altars marked with appropriate signs.